1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character reading system which executes a process of reading characters filled in a form based on predetermined read control information.
2. Description of the Related Art
A character reading system, which reads characters in a form and performs character recognition processing, generally comprises a read processing section for executing read processing and a format control information (hereinafter called FC information) preparing section for setting read control information called FC information that is used when the read processing section executes the read processing. Normally, FC information is set in advance by an operator before execution of read processing. In performing read processing, the read processing section reads characters filled in a form based on preset FC information. FC information is produced as an optical character reader (OCR) scans FC information registering control sheet (hereinafter simply called control sheet) on which parameter information for preparing FC information has been written. Based on the parameter information read from the control sheet, an FC preparing program in the FC information preparing section prepares and registers the FC information.
A conventional character reading system is designed such that read processing is executed referring to pre-registered FC information in routines of a read processing program in the read processing section.
In a case where a user-specific process such as checking only a specific field in a form, or checking is done using a user-specific checking method, however, conventionally, a maker asks a user such particular specifications and re-writes the form processing program to include the requested processing functions. This conventional method requires that both the FC information preparing program and read processing program be altered, irrespective of the amount of changes made in the specifications. To change the mentioned programs on the user side, the user should know all the specifications of the form processing program written by the maker. This is practically difficult to do as makers do not generally show all the specifications to users. If a user somehow finds out the necessary specifications and modifies the aforementioned two programs, there is a problem of deciding who, the maker or the user, is responsible for a trouble when such occurs.
If the specifications are altered on the maker side, however, it is impractical to modify the programs every time according to the user-specific processes as such a job is time-consuming and requires human labors.